by Annie West
Instantly his gaze, which had fixed on a spot in the middle distance, zeroed in on her. Once more Lina felt that keen scrutiny, as if he looked at her but saw more than anyone else ever had.
‘Fortunately I can afford it.’ A ghost of a smile hovered around his firm mouth. ‘If you work hard, I will sponsor your education.’
‘But how will I repay you?’ The words erupted before she could hold them back.
The Emir’s eyebrows rose. In surprise because she continued to speak without being invited? Yet he didn’t seem angry. Was that approval in his gleaming eyes?
‘You cannot simply accept this gift?’
Lina bit her lip, considering carefully. His Royal Highness the Emir of Halarq was a powerful man, accustomed to having his every word obeyed. Yet her conscience—or was it the pride her aunt complained of?—told her she had to set limits to this kindness.
‘I would be honoured, sir. Yet that same honour compels me to acknowledge my great obligation to you. It’s an obligation I must repay. We aren’t kin. I have no call on your charity.’
Lina’s heart thudded in her chest, her pulse rushing so fast through her body she felt light-headed.
For what seemed an age those piercing eyes, darker now and unreadable as polished obsidian, bored into her. Then, abruptly, he nodded.
‘So be it. If this turns out as I hope, you’ll be a shining example of change in Halarq. I intend to modernise our country through education, among other things. Work hard, learn, and on your return you can repay my generosity by helping to promote the value of education in those areas where people still refuse to send their daughters to school.’
He glanced at his watch and shoved his chair back from the desk.
Instantly Lina scrambled to her feet before sinking into a low bow, her heart swelling fit to burst. ‘I promise to study hard, sir.’ She’d make him proud, no matter what it took.
‘Excellent.’ With that he turned and strode from the room.
* * *
Four and a half years later Lina stepped off the plane a different woman.
Which was apt since the country she returned to had changed too.
The airport had expanded for a start, with a new streamlined terminal building and space for many more planes. The road into the city was a revelation—wide, straight and well-surfaced. It was even lined with rows of date palms and other trees.
A new hospital sat in spacious landscaped grounds at a major road junction and a university was under construction nearby. Across the city cranes testified to a programme of renewal.
The driver who’d met her kept up a flow of informative chatter in response to her queries. That marked a change too, for when she’d left Halarq she couldn’t imagine a male driver speaking more than was absolutely necessary to a woman. Though, to be fair, her experience was limited. She’d grown up in a rural province before her uncle had brought her to the capital. She’d rarely been in a car before she’d left her homeland. And this wasn’t an ordinary car but a limousine with the Emir’s crest on the door.
Lina felt a rogue shiver of heat through her insides at the thought that he’d sent one of his drivers to collect her.
Had he personally arranged it? Or had one of his staff done it without being asked?
Did the Emir even remember her?
In all those years years he’d sent not a word, though she knew the school staff had sent regular reports to the palace. For the first year, homesick and overwhelmed by the changes in her life, she’d have given anything for a word from him. In her loneliness the Emir had grown in her imagination, filling the empty places in her soul. He was protector, hero, saviour...and something else she couldn’t put a name to.
In the years she’d been away, bombarded with new experiences and places, new people and ideas, he’d remained a constant. A lodestar, the single reference point connecting her to Halarq and the world she’d left behind.
Which, she realised with a grimace, was dangerous. She was nothing to him. Once she’d fulfilled her end of their bargain she’d never see him again.
Pining over the Emir and wondering whether he approved of her choices and achievements wasn’t sensible.
He’d probably forgotten her. No doubt his officious secretary kept a watching brief on the little social experiment that was Lina. For though His Royal Highness had been kind, she understood he’d only looked for a solution that would remove her from the palace and feed into his plans to modernise Halarq. He simply hadn’t wanted her.
Nothing new there. To her father she’d been a disappointment because of her gender. To her aunt and uncle an inconvenience. To the Emir a problem to be solved.
Tangled emotions knotted Lina’s stomach. Anxiety definitely. Though she’d survived and eventually thrived in her Swiss school, she knew what it was to be utterly alone. She longed for connection. To belong, to a place and to people, or at least one person.
Savagely Lina cut off that thought.
She’d daydreamed of the Emir, so tall and handsome, for too long. She was no teenager now. There’d be no swooning over him, or for that matter, any man.
Once her obligation to the Emir was fulfilled, she had a career to build. An income to earn. A life to enjoy.
The limousine turned off the teeming street and onto the private road that led up from the old town to the citadel. Above, its coral-coloured walls rising from the sheer rock, rose the Emir’s palace. A silver and blue banner over the gate whipped in the breeze, proclaiming the Emir was in residence.
Lina clasped her hands tight in her lap, trying to still the rising tide of excitement and trepidation that quickened her pulse.
She’d thank him for the wonderful thing he’d done in giving her an education. She’d throw herself into whatever PR tasks he devised to promote education and, as soon as she could, remove herself from his orbit.
She smiled. That was settled.
Except, as so often in life, it didn’t work out that way.
* * *
Sayid exchanged farewells with the fiercely bearded provincial leader then watched him and his entourage bow themselves out through the wide doors of beaten copper.
Rolling his head back, he tried to relieve the stiffness of too many hours sitting in the formal audience chamber. It had been a long afternoon.
He disliked this echoing room with its lavish decorations and raised dais that set him apart from everyone. But he’d made so many reforms in such a short time, he listened when his aides advised he should retain the traditional space for meetings with provincial sheikhs. He worked hard to steer them into change on significant issues. Where he worked was not, to his mind, important. If retaining a show of the old customs made them more comfortable, so be it.
He was getting to his feet when the chamberlain appeared in the doorway. He wasn’t alone.
Sayid sank back on the jewelled throne, his hands curling over the gilded lion heads on the arms.
Suddenly alert, his eagerness to go dissipated as he took in the figure walking beside the chamberlain. Slim, curvaceous, delectably feminine, though her fitted skirt and jacket in jade green covered her from neck to knee.
Late afternoon sun lit her from behind, which had the twofold effect of making it difficult to read her features while highlighting her lush curves in loving detail.
High heels tapped demurely across the inlaid floor and Sayid had time to note her glossy dark hair was pulled severely back and up.
She halted in the middle of the room. Her eyes were downcast, as was traditional in Halarq on meeting the Emir. Yet it was rare for westerners to know that. She was well-prepared.
He sat forward, intrigued that a lone western woman should seek an audience.
‘You may approach.’
The pair walked slowly towards him and Sayid found himself watching with appreciation the gentle undulation
of her hips as she paced in those high heels. She wore no jewellery but that only accentuated the purity of her sculpted beauty. High cheekbones, eyes set on an intriguing slant, full lips, slender throat.
Heat crawled up from Sayid’s belly to clog his chest. A blast of fire shot straight to his loins. His hands tightened on the carved chair as she stopped before him, still with downcast eyes. She was one of the most beautiful, elegant women he’d ever seen. And Sayid had known many.
Yet something about her feathered his nape with a cold brush of warning.
Here, he sensed, lay trouble.
The chamberlain spoke. ‘Sire, I am pleased to bring before you...’
The woman’s jaw tipped high, her gaze rising to meet his and the chamberlain’s words were lost in the heavy thrum of Sayid’s pulse as he looked down into eyes as velvety as a drift of mountain violets. Holding his gaze, she dipped into a curtsey that was the epitome of grace.
Shock hammered. His blood rushed, drowning all noise.
Lina. Little Lina.
Sayid remembered her as pretty. Had told himself imagination had embroidered her charms. It had been the forbidden piquancy of finding himself her master, free to do as he wished with her, that had turned a passably attractive teenager into something special in his mind.
He’d been wrong. She was something special. More, she was extraordinary.
Not just because of her beauty. The way that clear-eyed stare met his, the hint of boldness behind the mask of politeness, communicated directly with him on a personal level. A level that made his belly tense and his calm crack.
‘Welcome back to Halarq.’ He kept his voice as grave as his expression. She might have knocked him sideways for an instant but Sayid would never let that show.
‘Thank you, sir.’ She bowed low in a move as formal and graceful as that of any courtier.
He refused to let his eyes track her trim frame, but it was too late. Her image was imprinted on his brain. ‘You’ve grown up.’
Her gaze met his, setting off a buzz of response at the base of his spine. Then her lips twitched into a far too appealing half-smile and she shrugged. ‘It happens to all of us.’ She paused, as if waiting for him to respond. ‘I just turned twenty-two last week.’
Better, far better than seventeen.
The sly voice in his mind was full of insinuation. Of anticipation. But he’d set himself up as her protector, her guardian. Because she had no one else.
Sayid knew what could happen to women who had no one to champion them. Especially beautiful, desirable women.
It was why he’d sent Lina away. Not only to pursue her education, but to keep her out of reach. He might be changing his country, one step at a time, to ensure all his people had the rights of free citizens, but he was still a man.
A man with a formidable appetite for pleasure.
Knowing that was a family trait, seeing its devastating effect on his uncle, who’d never learned to resist temptation, Sayid had striven to contain that side of his nature.
Yet he looked at Lina and something raw and ravenous stirred in his belly. Something uncivilised and unrepentantly greedy that spoke of want and the need to possess. It was a burn in his gut. A sharpness on his tongue. A tightening of his body.
Just like that! As if the rules he’d set for himself no longer existed. As if she wasn’t in his care.
Damn!
Years before he’d done what he could to protect her. According to Halarqi custom, since she’d been given into his keeping, Lina belonged to him. From that moment he was the head of her family. In his people’s eyes, and the law’s, he was her lord. Her master. Potentially her lover.
To his shame, the idea still sent an illicit thrill through him.
Yet, to his credit he’d done what a decent, civilised man would do—embracing his responsibility and becoming her guardian, sending her away.
He’d forgotten she was due to return today. Plus he’d assumed the years would be enough to sever this startling, impossible tug of desire. That he’d have become immune or she’d have grown ordinary.
Neither had happened.
Surely it was a malicious, mocking Fate that had allowed him to send away a child, only to receive in return a woman so flagrantly desirable.
Sayid forced a smile. ‘Congratulations on reaching such an advanced age.’ He stood, turning to the chamberlain. ‘That will be all for now. My ward and I have matters to discuss.’
CHAPTER FOUR
IF LINA HAD expected a warm welcome from her self-styled guardian, she’d have been disappointed.
The tight curve of his mouth could be classed as a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Those gleamed as cool and impenetrable as black onyx. Yet something about the quality of that look sent a tremor of yearning through her insides.
Severely she told herself she hadn’t expected warmth.
It was just that he’d been kind.
He’d treated her, not as an encumbrance or an embarrassment, but as a person who mattered.
When she looked at him she felt something like the prickle of delight she’d known years before in her home on the edge of the desert. She’d looked at the night sky and lost herself in the beauty of the diamond-bright wash of stars. Then she’d felt small and vulnerable but at the same time exultant, as if the vast night sky had touched her with a tiny spark of its magic.
Lina was too old for girlish fantasies about a handsome sheikh. Even though he’d swept in and rescued her. Even though such fantasies had been her solace and her rock as she grappled with life beyond Halarq and everything she knew.
Yet, to her dismay, she discovered fantasies weren’t so easy to banish. She looked into those midnight eyes, heard the warm burr of his voice, and felt it again, that swirl of starlight and wonder. That ripple of hyper-consciousness. Even the contrast of his spare, burnished flesh against pristine white robes caught and held her gaze. And the honed, arrogant but beautiful angles and planes of his face.
He’d altered in four and a half years. His shoulders seemed even wider than before, his chest deeper. There were new lines around his eyes and mouth too, but they only accentuated the masculine charisma of that strong face.
For one mad instant, when she saw a pulse pound at his temple and those broad shoulders stiffen, she’d thought he, too, was affected. But that was her imagination running riot. A second look confirmed she was wrong.
He led her to a pair of opulent antique chairs positioned on the far side of the room. They were a formal few metres apart, slightly turned to make the best of the view from the citadel, down over the ancient sprawling city.
‘Is it good to be home?’
Lina turned in her seat to find him watching her closely. A shiver skated through her at the intensity of his regard. She sat straighter.
‘I...it feels strange.’ Though what felt most strange was hearing him speak of home. As if she truly belonged though she was an outsider here. ‘I don’t really know the city. I was only here a short time.’
His sleek black eyebrows lifted. ‘You would rather return to your old town? Your old home?’
‘No. No!’ The shiver that tracked her spine this time had nothing to do with the man sitting across from her. Her fingers curled tight in her lap as she leaned closer. ‘Please don’t send me back. There’s no place for me there.’
She paused, pushing down the rising fear that she’d be made to return to the family who despised her. For years she hadn’t entertained the possibility. Surely the Emir had saved her from that?
‘I’m sure I’ll adjust quickly to life in the capital.’
She’d adapted to moving from a provincial town to an international school in Switzerland. To make matters worse, it wasn’t just any school, but one patronised by the wealthy and privileged. It taught not only the usual academic subjects, but all the other things
deemed necessary for a young woman about to take her privileged place in society. Presumably some officious secretary, on receiving the orders to enrol her in a school at royal expense, had automatically searched for the best, because only the best was ever provided for the Emir.
The other girls, all from wealthy families, had initially treated her as a freak. A freak who barely spoke their languages. Who couldn’t even read or write.
She’d been a figure of fun, the butt of malicious jokes and cruelty. It had only been in her last two years, as the oldest pupil there, that she’d found her place and become a mentor for the younger girls. She’d worked hard and shown true flair in her passion for languages and history, even if her writing was still laborious.
‘You’re certain you don’t want to return?’ She looked up to see his eyes narrowed on her, his hard, handsome face close to a frown. ‘There hasn’t been a softening in your relationship with your aunt and uncle?’
Lina snorted at the absurdity of the idea, then ducked her head, apologising. People did not snort in front of national leaders.
‘I take it that’s a no.’
She looked up in time to catch a glimmer in his eyes that she couldn’t identify. It made him seem more approachable. More like the man she’d met years ago who’d been stern yet gentle. Instantly Lina sank back in her chair, relief buzzing in her veins.
‘I’ve had no contact with them since the day my uncle left me at the servants’ entrance to the palace.’ For all they knew she could have spent the intervening years warming the Emir’s bed as his concubine.
Heat swept Lina’s breasts and throat and she moistened her lips as her throat dried.
Not in embarrassment at the idea, but because the thought of sharing Sayid Badawi’s bed appealed too much.
She’d once glimpsed behind the serious visage and imposing title to the virile, fascinating, kind man beyond. And she couldn’t seem to cure herself of the yearning to know more of him. Experience more.
As if he’d be interested in someone like her!
His stare didn’t waver, nor did he feel the need to fill the silence. She wondered frantically what he read in her face.
